Vincenzo Foppa of Brescia, founder of the Lombard school, his life ...

Chap. I. PAINTERS AT PAVIA IN 1456 21
da Senago, this being the first mention of both these artists in Pavian
records.'
Giovanni da Vaprio, who practised his art for many years at Pavia (he
died in the last decade of the fifteenth century), was the father of the painter
Agostino ;'^ he shared a workshop with Giovanni da Senago in the parish of
Santa Maria Gualtieri, and in 1455, when still a young man, joined the third
order of St. Francis, of which, in his old age, he became a superior.
Both painters, being hard-working and thrifty, succeeded in amassing
small fortunes, which enabled them to buy houses in Pavia and property in
the country. In January, 1445, we find Senago already purchasing land, and
in 1456 Vaprio, with his brother Nicolino, also acquired property.
The painters Giovanni da Caminata and Giovanni Mezzabarba were
members of noble and wealthy Pavian families. We find notices of the firstnamed
towards 1453, and a signed fresco by him is in the Church of
S. Giacomo della Cereda, near Belgioioso ; he died in the first years of the
Giovanni Mezzabarba, son of a physician named Guglielmo,
sixteenth century.
is mentioned in only two Pavian documents of March 19 and July 7, 1456;
but after this his name disappears from the records. He may possibly
have migrated to Genoa, a city in closest intercommunication with Pavia at
this date, and where from December 19, 1455, we meet with notices of a
painter Marco Mezzabarba, who was certainly of Pavian origin.
Leonardo and Antonio Vidolenghi, who came from a small village in
Pavian territory, from which they are also called "da Marzano," where the
family still exists, were sons of Gerardo Vidolenghi, a rich miller who for
many years had been living at Pavia, where another of his sons, Ambrogio,
was educated and eventually became a notary. Antonio and Leonardo are
first mentioned as painters in documents of 1453. Leonardo was the better
artist of the
two, and a fresco by him of 1463 in the Carmine at Pavia proves
that he had considerable ability. He also worked in Genoa, as we gather
from Pavian records of May 11, 1463, and April 14, 1466.' Pavian writers
'
"Socii assumptio facta per magistrum Johannem de Senago et Magistrum Johannem
de Vaprio."
- Numerous painters of the family of Da Vaprio were working at Milan in the
second half of the fifteenth century, and we know from Calvi and others that their surname
was Zenoni. We have never met with the name in the archives at Pavia, and
cannot therefore tell whether the Milanese and Pavian artists were of the same family.
Some writers have affirmed that Costantino da Vaprio, the best known of all the
painters of the name, was the son of the Giovanni mentioned above, but this is
incorrect, as we know from the will of the latter,
Pavia, that he had only two sons, Gian Giacomo and Agostino.
^
preserved in the Archivio Notarile at
Leonardo Vidolenghi was the master of Agostino da Montebello, by whom there is
a large fresco in the apse of S. Michele at Pavia, and of Lorenzo Fasolo. It has been